17.4 days old
92.5 percent lit
April 24, 2016
By Phil Plait
Sometime (click here) you see a photograph that’s just so wonderful you can’t wait to show it to other people.
It was taken by Petr Horálek,
a European Southern Observatory Ambassador — the Ambassadors are a
group of excellent photographers who shoot pictures of the ESO
observatories for public outreach.
The photo was taken on April 6, 2016, just minutes before sunrise. Smack dab in the center is Venus, cruel twin of the Earth, covered in clouds so reflective they make the planet the third brightest natural object in our skies.
Below it is the crescent Moon, less than a day before its new phase.
The crescent is so thin it’s almost an afterthought. Amazingly, the
rest of the Moon’s surface was unlit by the Sun. So why can we see it? Earthshine!
Light from the Sun hits the Earth, reflects off of it, illuminating the
Moon, which then reflects it back into space, and to Earth. Our planet
is very bright in the lunar skies, 50 times brighter than a full Moon.
That’s enough to softly bathe the surface of our satellite in light....
